Swiss researchers have developed a groundbreaking telescopic contact lens with a 3x zoom capability. The wearer can zoom in or out simply by blinking. Eric Tremblay and his team from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne unveiled the new device at the annual meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Science in California. The contact lens is the first of its kind, and is made up of a series of telescopic lenses that were originally developed for drones in 2013. Since then, the researchers have refined the lenses to make them more robust and durable, and have also improved their performance.
The lenses themselves are rigid, but contain small rings of aluminum mirror inside the 1.5mm thick glass. By using polarization filters, the light is refracted in such a way that the wearer can switch between normal vision and a 2.8x magnification simply by blinking. To switch between zoom levels, the wearer blinks with their right eye to zoom in, and with their left eye to return to normal vision. The new telescopic contact lens could be particularly useful for people with visual impairments, of which there are around 285 million worldwide. However, the device is still in the prototype stage, and the researchers say that further improvements are needed before it can be brought to market.
The development of the telescopic contact lens is a significant breakthrough in the field of vision technology. The ability to zoom in and out with a simple blink of the eye could have a major impact on the lives of people with visual impairments, as well as those who require enhanced vision for certain activities. The researchers are continuing to work on improving the device, and are hopeful that it will be available to the public in the near future.
